The DLP-based Acer H7550ST ($999) delivers a constellation of features—including 1080p (1,920-by-1,080) resolution, a 3,000-lumen rated brightness, and a short throw combined with a modest zoom—that make it a strong candidate as a home-entertainment or low-end home-theater projector. Its Achilles' heel is that it shows rainbow artifacts just often enough that they could be annoying to anyone who sees them easily. However, it delivers otherwise high-quality video. For those who aren't bothered by rainbow artifacts, the H7550ST is a tempting choice.

As with most of its close competition, including the Optoma HD28DSE and the Epson Home Cinema 2040 3D 1080p 3LCD Projector, which is our Editors' Choice moderately priced 1080p home-entertainment model, the H7550ST is well suited for gaming, with a short lag time for a projector.

Compared with the Optoma and Epson models, the H7550ST is notably bigger and a little heavier, at 3.9 by 14 by 9.5 inches (HWD) and 7 pounds 8 ounces, which makes it more cumbersome to carry with you to a friend's house for a movie night or gaming. However, it's still small and light enough that if you don't have room for installing it permanently, you can store it away and then set it up quickly and easily when you want to use it. Acer even supplies a soft carrying case with reinforced side panels.

Setup

Setup is a little unusual for a short-throw projector. Most short-throw models don't offer any zoom, which means you have to move the projector when you want to adjust the image size. The H7550ST's 1.1x zoom gives you some flexibility for exactly how far to place it from the screen for a given size image. However, the cost of this added convenience is that even at its maximum zoom setting, the H7550ST has a longer throw than most short-throw models.